


Little Steps in Fighting Back

by completelyhopeless



Series: Detective Grayson and Forensic Batgirl Case Two [6]
Category: DCU
Genre: Alternate Universe, Case Fic, F/M, Gen, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-16
Updated: 2015-03-16
Packaged: 2018-03-18 03:00:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,009
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3553562
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/completelyhopeless/pseuds/completelyhopeless
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dick and Jason confront Stephanie. Barbara takes other matters into her own hands.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Little Steps in Fighting Back

**Author's Note:**

> I have been working on this part off and on for over a week now. It has really not wanted to get done.
> 
> I just put my foot down tonight and said it would be, finally, and that was that.
> 
> It might not have been my best decision ever, but I think most of it is sound. At least... the scene with Babs and Jim is. :)

* * *

“Oh, hell, no,” Jason said as the girl ran around the corner, disappearing from their sight. “Chasing after kids is not part of my job description.”

Dick knew he should be running after her, but he was hoping that she might turn back on her own, that she'd realize that he had a reason for knowing her name and it was actually a good thing—he was probably being too optimistic, but he still would like something to go easy for _once_ in his life—and maybe she'd stop running if she realized she wasn't being followed. 

He turned to Jason, deciding to let this play out a little. “Do you even _have_ a job? I didn't think you did, so how can anything not be a part of your job description?”

“Because if I don't have a job, then I don't have a job description.”

“Right. Good point. Stay here and make sure no one contaminates the crime scene then,” Dick told him, and Jason rolled his eyes. Anyone else, and he'd take that as a sign that they had no intention of staying, but this was Jason. He was different. He was stubborn about helping, but he always did come through in the end when he was needed. Dick didn't have anyone he'd rather have backing him up, and that included Bruce.

Well, Bruce off the wagon, at least. On the wagon, Bruce was a formidable man. He wasn't even that bad off the wagon, but he was far from at his best.

“Aren't you going after her?”

“I am,” Dick said. He glanced toward the corner. “I was hoping she'd come back on her own.”

“You're an idiot.”

“Optimism is not the same as stupidity,” Dick corrected, getting another eye roll. He shrugged, smiling a little before turning to head after his witness. Maybe she'd stopped to listen to them. He had done stuff like that before, when he was a kid and working on a case, and maybe Stephanie would do the same.

Or maybe his bad luck would hold. Did hold.

Something hard connected with Dick's stomach, knocking him back into the wall. He hit with a groan, trying to ignore the pain for a moment as he managed to focus on a very familiar sweatshirt. She should have ditched that thing by now, but maybe she hadn't had a chance. “I am sure Tim will laugh when he hears about this.”

Instead of doing what he'd hoped and making her realize he wasn't a threat, his words caused her to swing the pipe again, and he tried to dodge but wasn't fast enough to avoid it completely. His head took the hit this time, and he had a crazy thought about Tim not surviving friendship with Stephanie followed by something very dark and then nothing.

* * *

“I hate men.”

“I hope that applies to most of the rest of my gender and not to me,” her father said as he wheeled himself into the lab. “I'd hate to find myself in that group, especially coming from my favorite daughter.”

“Dad, I'm your only daughter,” Barbara said, but she smiled as she faced him. “It's not you. I promise. I'm just—Dick hung up on me before I could tell him what I found. He's looking for someone with a rare blood disorder, and that would narrow things down for him considerably, but he's off with Jason stumbling on more bodies again.”

“He has a habit of doing that,” her father agreed. “Bruce said it was half-gift, half-curse.”

Barbara frowned. “I am not sure how it could be anything _but_ a curse. Dick doesn't need more bodies in his life, and this city has enough dead without him managing to find more every time he's out in the field.”

“True, to a point, but if you want to flip that around—think of how much better it is that a trained investigator finds the bodies before someone else. Dick knows how to handle a crime scene. He also knows how to handle notifications and death in general.”

“Dick's familiarity with people around him dying is _not_ a good thing,” Barbara disagreed. She sighed. “I need to call Amy. The new crime scene needs to be processed and Dick is apparently unavailable because Jason knows something about Stephanie.”

“Have you considered that you could do something with your information besides give it to Dick?”

“I'm not a detective,” Barbara reminded him. “I may know how to shoot a gun, but I don't carry one, and my badge doesn't have the same kind of... perks with it that non-civilians have with theirs. I'm not going and chasing down this killer by myself. I could, I already have a good idea who is behind it, and I'm making that group even smaller, but I don't usually leave my lab. I like my lab. I don't need to solve crime from anywhere but here.”

Her father gave her a long appraisal. “I'm not sure that your dependence on this place is healthy—bat food and toothbrushes?—but I know I need a forensic tech with your kind of skills so I am not going to complain as much as I probably should—”

She snorted. “Why am I not surprised?”

“I suppose I always was a cop first and a father second,” he admitted. Shaking his head, he continued, “still, that doesn't mean that your hours don't concern me or that I don't think you should take more time off than you do.”

Barbara shrugged. “I don't know what I'd do with all that free time. I am happier working. Really.”

“Or avoiding something.”

She frowned. She wouldn't have thought her father would think she would use all the extra hours that she put in—that she was _needed_ —to have a reason to turn down Dick's repeated entreaties for a date. She didn't need an excuse. She wasn't getting involved with him. “I am not avoiding Dick.”

Her father laughed. “I wouldn't have said you were. If anything, you give him special treatment.”

“Excuse me?”

“My point—the one you missed earlier—was that you could have called some other detective when Dick wasn't available. You could have passed the information on and been done with it. You didn't. You could have left a message and you didn't. You make sure he gets his results in person or over the phone. You give his cases priority—”

“With Bullock on leave and Montoya in the hospital, until you hired on Gage, Bard, and Rohrbach, Dick was the only detective _worth_ processing cases for,” Barbara objected. “I am not showing him favoritism because he's my friend. And I call him because he'll listen as opposed to most of the others. He's also stupidly dedicated and will take those calls at all hours and do everything he has to in order to get the case closed. He also makes friends with almost everyone and has connections other cops in this city couldn't dream of having. He finds a way to use what I give him. It's worth prioritizing what he gets. And in this case, the witness is a friend of Tim's, and I can't let anything happen to her, not if I can stop it, and what I know could.”

“Then do it,” her father said. “Be the heroine you are instead of the unsung one hiding in her lab.”

She folded her arms over her chest. “Only if you'll be the cop I know you are and take care of this evidence for me.”

He smiled. “Done. Tell me what you've got.”

* * *

“Ow.”

“Way to understate it, Dickie-bird. I think there'd be a few people ready to drag you to the hospital and keep you there for that one. Looks nasty as hell. Could be bleeding inside.”

Dick grimaced, unwilling to move. He didn't want to believe that. Not because he doubted the girl was capable of fighting back—he knew she was, had first hand experience with that now—but because he did not have time to spend in the hospital. He had too much to do. He had to find—No, he didn't need to find Stephanie. She'd found him. With something very strong and very painful.

Good news. Stephanie could fight. She could protect herself.

Bad news. Dick probably wasn't going to be arresting anyone any time soon. He might not even be moving.

“I thought you knew how to fight. You know—because you're supposed to be the mystic leader of us rogue assassins.”

“Psuedo-assassins,” Dick corrected. “And I'm going to take over the world using hugs. Hugs and maybe kittens. I haven't decided about the cats. Some people are allergic, you know.”

“Did I really break him? I didn't mean to break him.”

“What?” Dick tried to push himself up from the wall. “I am not broken. You did not break me, even if you have a pretty nasty swing with a pipe. Takes a lot to break me. No one's managed it yet. Jason?”

“I didn't touch her. I swear.”

The blond's eyes got wide. “Would he have? He... Oh. I didn't even think about that. I guess I thought—well, it took a minute for me to realize that you weren't talking about Tim because you were threatening him— _no one_ harms Tim—and then I assumed because you two were together—I'm such an idiot. I've just been running for so long that I don't know what's up or down or sideways or bent—though I can appreciate what's _built._ I think both of you qualify.”

Jason frowned. “You're not seriously flirting with either of us right now, are you? You just whacked him and I may be warped, but I'm not sure I'm cradle-robbing warped. Not yet, anyway.”

“Remind me later,” Dick said, slumping back down against the wall. “I think Babs has a colleague that would be perfect for you. And it's not so much flirting as lack of internal monologue. Babs does it sometimes, too. She doesn't even realize it. It's adorable.”

“You are so lovesick you're pathetic.”

Dick shrugged. “Apparently, when I fall, I fall hard. Babs is just proof of that.”

“I think it's kind of sweet,” Stephanie said with a smile. “Oh, if only more guys were like that.”

“Don't waste your breath hoping,” Jason told her. “They only exist in fiction. Or in Dick's case—delusion. Not entirely his fault, though. Someone messed him up good as a child. Same with me. Only he got the hero complex. Me not so much.”

“So what does that make you?”

“Don't listen to him. He's a good guy. He just has issues,” Dick insisted. He still believed that, had never stopped believing in it.

Stephanie nodded, turning to Dick. “You're Tim's cop friend. He kept trying to tell me to talk to you instead of investigating this myself or with his help, but I didn't think—look, I know how cops are in Gotham, and Tim is sweet but naïve and I didn't want him to be wrong about you.”

“Dick is a bleeding heart and a candidate for sainthood,” Jason muttered. “He's also bleeding, so why don't you tell us why the hell you're mixed up in any of this and why you hit him?”

“Well...” Stephanie fidgeted. “It's complicated.”

“Uncomplicate it. Now.”

“Jason,” Dick began, using a warning tone. They did not need to scare her again. His side would rather they didn't. So would his head. Even if he didn't have a concussion this time, he was going to be sore for days and he did have a headache. “Please tell me Tim didn't convince you to become some kind of junior detective like he thinks I was and he wants to be.”

“No,” she said, but her words weren't much of a relief. “I started investigating because of my dad. He's a part of these murders. I know that. I'm just not sure how he's connected, but he is. Trust me, he is.”


End file.
